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(CURRENT EVENTS) offshore oil drilling platform located off the coast of Louisiana and Mississippi. The platform was owned and operated by Transocean, LTD., under lease to British Petroleum (BP).
The well, which was in 1 mile of water, blew out (or ruptured) on 20 April 2010, and gushed millions of barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico. On 14 July, the main rupture appeared to have been capped. By then, probably 4 million barrels of crude had been released into a sensitive habitat, destroying the livelihood of tens of thousands of people.
According to some estimates, the Deepwater Horizon blowout was the worst peacetime oil well blowout in history.
The Deepwater Horizon platform killed eleven crew members when it exploded. The operator and its lessor, BP, had been cited hundreds of times for major safety procedure violations.
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(US GOVERNMENT) Agency of the Department of Homeland Security tasked with the enforcement of US border protection and with the investigation of violations.
Created in 2003 from the former US Customs Service (Homeland Security Act); accounts for approximately one-fifth of the DHS's total budget. Budget is greater than the entire defense budget of Colombia, Taiwan, or Iran. It employs 52,000 people, including 17,000 border patrol agents, 1000 air and marine agents, and 22,000 port inspectors.
The Villarreal investigation is among scores of corruption cases in recent years...
...Department of Homeland Security officials have reconstituted an internal affairs unit at Customs and Border Protection, one of the largest federal law enforcement agencies, overseeing both border agents and customs officers.
When the Homeland Security Department was created in 2003, the internal affairs unit was dissolved and its functions spread among other agencies...
(NY Times, "Border Agents, Lured by the Other Side"--27 May 2008)
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Civil rights organization that collects information about hate groups. SPLC-affiliated lawyers also file lawsuits to enforce the constitutional rights of Americans who are denied them by the authorities.
As the name implies, beneficiaries of the SPLC include people who are poor, and require legal protection from either racist violence or abusive, indifferent agents of the state.
Bernard Monroe Sr., an elderly black man, was shot to death on his front porch by a white police officer who had entered his house in Homer, La., without apparent justification or a warrant. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) filed a wrongful death lawsuit that alleged two white officers created a volatile situation when they entered Monroe's property during a gathering of his family and friends on Feb. 20, 2009.
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(US GOVERNMENT) Immigration and Naturalization Service: former agency of the US government responsible for the enforcement of immigration law, and the processing of visa/permit requests. The INS and its successor (see below) are justly famous for treating millions of hardworking, intelligent, and creative people with the most demeaning, barbaric sort of bureaucratic cruelty imaginable.
After the attacks of 11 September 2001, Congress passed a bill creating the Department of Homeland Security (DHS); the INS was split up into its enforcement functions (which became part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and its processing functions (Citizenship and Immigration Services, or CIS).
Prior to its dissolution in 2003, the INS was part of the Department of Justice. The CIS and ICE are both part of the DHS.
Because of its extraordinary power over the lives of millions of US nationals and residents, the Immigration and Naturalization Service gained lasting notoriety. Seven years after it was superseded by the CIS, most people associated visa regulations with the INS.
"Brother from Another Planet" was a brilliant parody of INS agent behavior.
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(ECONOMICS) an official definition of poverty, in which one third of one's income is spent on food. "Food," here, is defined as the most cost-effective way of meeting basic nutritional needs.
The definition has one advantage, which is that researchers can get comparable information about poverty for any country in the world. The disadvantage is that it's arbitrary (why one third? why food? why not shelter, health care, and heating?); the other is that the cost of living varies dramatically in different neighborhoods in different cities of different US states, yet the poverty level is the same (expressed in dollar amounts) everywhere in a given country.
A better measure is the self-sufficiency standard.
Living under the official poverty level can be a lot worse in affluent communities like San Francisco, where the cost of basic necessities is very high. On the other hand, it's also a lot worse in areas such as rural Mississippi, where public amenities (such as libraries equipped with computers for public use) are rare.
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Former name of BP, p.l.c. The name "British Petroleum" remains in use because "BP" is useless for internet searches. Third largest oil company in the world, by sales (behind Exxon Mobile and Royal Dutch Shell; in 2009, these were $246.1 billion.
BP is the largest oil and gas producer in the US.
Lessor of Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico. On 20 April 2010, a fire and explosion on the Deepwater Horizon killed eleven crew members and was followed by a blowout, during which perhaps four million barrels of crude oil were poured into the ecologically sensitive area.
Company was founded in 1909 by William Knox D'Arcy as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), and used its ties with the hapless Qejar Dynasty ruling Iran.
In 1925, Reza Khan (formerly an employee of APOC) had himself proclaimed Shah; his ascendancy from commoner to emperor was stimulated by Iran popular anger at the way APOC was pumping billions of pounds from Iran's land to the Exchequer of the UK, while a ridiculously small amount went to Iran itself. Shah Reza promised to revise the agreement with APOC, but after 7 years of negotiating with the company, got nothing more than a name change (to Anglo-Iranian).
In 1951, Prime Minister Muhammad Mussadegh nationalize the company's assets in Iran. On behalf of AIOC, MI-5 and the CIA staged a coup d'etat that ousted the democratically elected Prime Minister in favor of absolute dictatorship by the Shah (1953).
Until 1997, British Petroleum was part of an industry-wide consortium that funded climate change "skepticism."
Although it is financially and legally unrelated to the British government, BP has historically been treated by the British FCO as if it were an arm of the state.
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(MULTILATERAL GOVERNMENT) International court based in the Hague, the Netherlands; founded in 1889; oldest multilateral court. In some respects, a precursor to the International Court of Justice (also in the Hague--in the same building, the Peace Palace).
The PCA differs from the ICJ in that only national governments may be respondents in the ICJ (which operates like a civil court). The PCA settles disputes that may arise between a private party (such as RCA, in RCA vs. China-1935) and a national government, or between national governments. Parties submit to the PCA when the dispute is a nuisance to both, but relevant laws are uncertain.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration has a three-part organizational structure consisting of an Administrative Council that oversees its policies and budgets, a panel of independent potential arbitrators known as the Members of the Court, and its Secretariat, known as the International Bureau, headed by the Secretary-General.
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